Blythe Danner plays a veteran actress whose family gathers in the Berkshires in Donald Margulies’ contemporary homage to Anton Chekhov

Timing is everything. Donald Margulies respectfully raids the Chekhovian thematic pantry in The Country House, which arrives on Broadway in an elegant production staged with customary polish by Daniel Sullivan and starring Blythe Danner in a role that overlaps with her own professional history. But coming in the wake of Christopher Durang’s far more illuminating contemporary riff on the Russian master, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, seriously undercuts the usefulness of this engaging, if rather safe, middlebrow entertainment. Appropriating elements drawn primarily from The Seagull and Uncle Vanya, Margulies’ Chekhov excursion is a vast improvement on the lame-duck derivation of Sharr White’s turgid The Snow Geese, which played this same Manhattan Theatre Club venue last season. But for all its diverting banter, heated emotional vivisection and tender resolutions, this is a comedy-drama with no edge or lingering aftertaste. It’s mildly amusing, then it’s moderately affecting, and then it’s over.